tening message; so the priest married the couple.
The two wives live together to this day in the house of Simo at
Zhupa. The archbishop, since the departure of the Turks, has
repeatedly called on Simo to repudiate his second wife; but the
principal obstacle is the first wife, who looks upon the second as a
sort of sister: under these anomalous circumstances, Simo was under a
sort of excommunication, until he made a fashion of repudiating the
second wife, by the first adopting her as a sister."

The captain, who was an intelligent modest man, would fain have kept
me till next day; but I felt anxious to get to Alexinatz; and on
arrival at a hill called Vrbnitzkobrdo, the vale of the Morava again
opened upon us in all its beauty and fertility, in the midst of which
lay Krushevatz, which was the last metropolis of the Servian empire;
and even now scarce can fancy picture to itself a nobler site for an
internal capital. Situated half-way between the source and the mouth
of the Morava, the plain has breadth enough for swelling zones of
suburbs, suburban villas, gardens, fields, and villages.

It was far in the night when we arrived at Krushevatz. The Natchalnik
was waiting with lanterns, and gave us a hearty welcome. As I went
upstairs his wife kissed my hand, and I in sport wished to kiss her's;
but the Natchalnik said, "We still hold to the old national custom,
that the wife kisses the hand of a stranger." Our host was a
fair-haired man, with small features and person, a brisk manner and
sharp intelligence, but tempered by a slight spice of vanity. The
_tout ensemble_ reminded me of the Berlin character.

_Natchalnik_. "I am afraid that, happy as we are to receive such
strangers as you, we are not sufficiently acquainted with the proper
ceremonies to be used on the occasion."

_Author_. "The stranger must conform to the usage of the country, not
the country to the standard of the stranger. I came here to see the
Servians as they are in their own nature, and not in their imitations
of Europe. In the East there is more ceremony than in the West; and if
you go to Europe you will be surprised at the absence of ceremonious
compliments there."

_Natchalnik_. "The people in the interior are a simple and uncorrupted
race; their only monitor is nature."

_Author_. "That is true: the European who judges of the Servians by
the intrigues of Belgrade, will form an unfavourable opinion of them;
the mass of the nation, in spite of